


Bridges

by mcicioni



Category: The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Genre: A little (implicit) Chris/OFC sex and Vin/OFC sex, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Period-Typical Language, Period-Typical Prejudices, Prostitution, Some C/V sex (they are the OTP)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27042589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcicioni/pseuds/mcicioni
Summary: Chris and Vin ride out of the village (again) and come across five independent women.
Relationships: Chris Adams/Vin
Comments: 42
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to darcyone, for her constant generous help with language issues, and to Linda and Hal, for Americanisms.
> 
> Special thanks to Sindarina, for pushing me to write M7 eighteen months ago (readers may wish she'd pushed me under a bus instead) and for suggesting, in her beautiful story "Zusammen am Rand", how Chris and Britt may have met in their younger days.
> 
> Britt _is_ , albeit fleetingly, seen reading a book in canon.

  
  


Chris opens his eyes. The sky is dark grey, with very few, faint streaks of yellowish pink. He shivers in his bedroll; it’s late September, the days are still sunny and warm, but the nights are getting cold.

The fire’s almost out, and he doesn’t want to get up to save it. He’s not ready for yet another start towards nowhere. He closes his eyes and sinks into the dark hole of his mind, a deep void where faces and voices float, overlapping into chaos. Harry at first, _No tricks now,_ and his last smile, both of them aware of the lie they were sharing, and warmed by it. Britt, leaning against the doorframe, _I’ve changed my mind_ , no explanations, just the bare fact. Calvera’s last question, too damn late for any answer, and the bewildered expression on his face even after he’d died.

In the village, there had been a couple of moments when he had allowed himself to think, _This is different. We are what we are, but we may be building some bridges here._ And at the end, no bridges, only the old man’s compassionate dismissal, _you’re like a strong wind that blows over the land and passes on._ In his first years as a hired gun, he actually missed anyone he said goodbye to after a job. Now he has learned to ride on, and to get on with his life, day after day, until the moment a bullet, from someone else’s gun or his own, will put a stop to all pointless memories and speculations. One day soon, maybe.

He re-opens his eyes, takes a couple of deep breaths, noiselessly slides out of his bedroll, and goes to answer a call of nature in the bushes near the horses. Back at camp, he stirs the embers back to life, gets his battered coffee pan and fills it with water from his canteen, as he has done countless times.

“Mornin.”

He glances across. Vin is watching him, up on an elbow, short blond hair sticking out every which way.

Chris doesn’t know if he’s more annoyed or more relieved by having his reflections broken. He nods acknowledgement while mixing ground coffee with the water in the pan and puts the pan to boil. Vin crawls out of his blankets, walks across the dirt road and disappears into the bushes on the other side. He’s limping a little from the bullet he caught just before he covered him and Harry.

Vin comes back, pours water from his canteen on his bandana and rubs some dust and dirt from his face and hands. “What’ve we got for breakfast? Any of Sotero’s tortillas left?”

Chris gets the last two tortillas and pours the coffee. They eat and drink in silence, and Chris decides that in the cold greyness of the new day, Vin’s presence is not unwelcome. Vin smiles appreciatively at the coffee and starts speaking around his last mouthful of tortilla. 

“So. Feel like goin back to Camarga?”

Chris frowns. Is Vin throwing a rope to a drowning man? No, maybe he’s just trying to lay a plank across the space between them. _Another_ plank. He stands up and goes to his saddlebags. “Nothing there. No action, no jobs.” He gets his map out, looks at it, and speaks slowly, carefully. He’s stepping out onto Vin’s plank, and it doesn’t feel all that solid.

“West, there’s Deming, then Lordsburg, then Arizona. East, there’s Alamogordo and Santa Fe. North, there’s Socorro and Albuquerque.”

Vin limps over and lightly leans over Chris’s shoulder to look at the map. “I’ve been to Arizona. Never been to Albuquerque, though.” He pauses for a moment. “You?”

Chris shakes his head. “Won’t kill us to have a look.” He looks Vin over. “Go sit on your saddle and take your trousers down.”

Vin blinks twice, then throws his head back and laughs. His neck is strong, and right now it’s slightly pink. He points to his injured thigh with exaggerated disappointment: “Oh, _that_ ’s what you want to take a look at.”

Chris doesn’t laugh. “It gets infected, you can’t go anywhere.” He glances at Vin’s clothes, threadbare and bearing a few traces of the last couple of meals, gets one of his two clean shirts, digs in his pocket for Britt’s knife and swiftly cuts the back of the shirt into neat strips. 

Vin has pulled down his trousers and underpants. The wound is a red, slightly swollen line against strong muscles and pale skin covered in soft reddish-blond hair. Chris concentrates on washing it, pours a little whisky on it, and bandages it tightly. He’s done this before, with other companions, an inevitable part of their job, but it’s never been quite like this moment, with no words exchanged, with wide-open blue eyes staring at his fingers.

“Done,” he says, unnecessarily. Vin quickly pulls up his clothes and buckles his belt.

“We’ll take it easy today,” Chris says. “Las Cruces is a good place to stop.”

“I only got a couple dollars,” Vin says cheerfully. “Bound to be a poker game somewhere.”

“I’ve got enough for food and a room for a couple of days. By then you should be all right.”

Vin gives him a swift grin. “Thanks.” He starts to say something else, but shrugs lightly and goes quiet again.

  
  


It’s late afternoon. Chris and Vin are in Esperanza’s Café in Las Cruces, making short work of two bowls of _chili con carne_ and rice. Afterwards, they’ll go back to their room at the hotel. Easy enough not to think about the future for a few hours; a bit easier if there’s two of them, maybe.

Vin swallows a mouthful of food, pauses and takes a long swig of beer. “You took Britt’s knife,” he says, out of the blue.

Chris looks up from his plate. “Yeah.” He splays both hands on the table. He doesn’t need to explain anything. And yet, maybe he needs to put things into words, for himself more than for his companion.

“I met him about ten years ago,” he says slowly. “Don’t know if I could call him a friend. He and I crossed paths every so often. A few times we found ourselves working on the same jobs. Never on opposite sides, though.”

“He read books, didn’t he?” Vin looks up from his glass of beer, looking vaguely puzzled. “I saw him readin in the village. Must’ve brought one or two books along on the job.”

“He did,” Chris says, with a small jolt of fondness at the memory. “Once, on a cattle drive, he showed me what he was reading. Short book, written by two Germans, in English. It said that the root of all evil was private property, and that workers needed to get together and take over all production.”

Vin thinks this over. “Not sure it’d work. Too many different kinds of workers, farm workers, railroad workers, factory workers up North. They couldn’t all get together and fight.” He stops and looks down into his glass again. His eyelashes are long and thick. “Still. Hilario once said to me that seein Calvera run from them was a feelin worth dyin for.” He sighs and speaks softly, almost to himself. “A feelin worth havin. Even if you end up dyin alone, like Britt, like Lee.” He lifts his eyes into Chris’s. “But you know, somethin worth _livin_ for would be even better.”

“Do you? Have something worth living for?” Chris snaps, regretting it immediately.

“I haven’t had that for a long time.” Vin says, not angry, but not resigned either. “But, back there, like I told you, I got thinkin. And maybe I’d like …”

He doesn’t get to finish. Right outside the café, a man’s voice shouts, “You were told to leave town,” and there are light footsteps and heavier stomping, and then a fist smacking against flesh. A woman screams. Another woman’s voice starts shouting, “It’s our right, it’s our home,” and a man growls a curse, and there’s a heavy thud, a body falling, and more thuds, probably kicks.

Chris and Vin barely glance at each other as they get up and make for the door. Chris throws three dollar bills on the table.

“Don’t worry,” Esperanza shouts towards their backs as she grabs the money, “It’s just the whores from Garnet Street. Getting what’s coming to them from Mr Hansen’s men.” 

Their side of the street is empty except for two women and two men. One of the women is lying unconscious on the boardwalk; the other, a curly-haired girl, is being held by one of the men and slapped and punched by the other one. None of the people on the other side of the street give any sign of wanting to intervene.

“This’ll teach you sluts to mind warnings,” the one holding the girl is shouting in her ear while the other hits her, “you’ll get a lot more than this if you don’t pack up and leave. Or if you don’t go back to Mr Hansen’s place. That’s the only choice you got.”

“Let her go,” Chris says softly. The man hitting the girl turns around, and before he can open his mouth Chris strikes him on the jaw, fast and hard; the man grunts, staggers backwards and falls on the boardwalk. He reaches for his gun, but Vin is right beside him and with his good leg delivers a vicious kick to his hand; there’s the noise of bones crunching, and the man crawls off howling. His friend, still holding the girl, stares into Chris’s levelled gun and lets go of her.

“Sheriff’s office,” Chris says, giving the man a shove.

“No,” the girl says, kneeling by her companion. They’re both wearing bonnets and respectably buttoned-up dresses, they could be mothers running errands for their families. “No point. Sheriff’s on Hansen’s payroll.” Her face is bruised, her mouth is full of saliva mixed with blood, but her hazel eyes are angry, determined.

Vin nods, wheels around, catches Hansen’s man off guard and knocks him out with a left hook to his chin. Then he lifts the unconscious woman in his arms: “Where’s the doctor?”

“I’ll find him,” Chris says. “You take them both home. Watch yourselves.”

“I know where Garnet Street is,” Dr Gomez says. He’s quite young, with spectacles and longish, untidy dark hair. It’s not a long walk. Garnet Street is at the edge of town, near the railway tracks, a small dead-end street with just a hardware store and a Chinese laundry. There’s only one house, at the end: it’s family-sized, with a neat front yard and a vegetable patch at the back. A buggy is by the back door, but there doesn’t seem to be a horse anywhere. The only tell-tale signs of what sort of house this is are the drawn blinds on all windows, upstairs and downstairs. 

The woman who opens the door is in her late twenties, Mexican, plump and no-nonsense. “Eva and Janet are upstairs, in Eva’s room,” she explains in good English. 

Dr Gomez takes his hat off and heads for the stairs, and Chris steps into the kitchen. It’s clean, fairly tidy, a vague smell of baking in the air. Vin is sitting at the table, sipping coffee; he raises his eyes into Chris’s, and they’re full of cold fury.

“There’s five workin girls,” he says. “They used to work for a fella name of Hansen, who owns the hotel, the saloon, and the brothel. Girls on his payroll have to give him two-thirds of what they make, and they have no choice of how many men, or how clean, or how rough.”

Chris nods. “So these five decided to work on their own. And Hansen didn’t like it.”

“Of course not.” The Mexican woman hands Chris a cup of coffee. “We were the best girls, the ones who had the most regulars. So we made secret plans. For a year we saved every dime, every cent, until we had enough to put down a deposit on this house. And last month we left and settled here. Most of our regulars followed us.”

“And your life got better,” Chris says.

“You bet.” A tall, fair-haired young woman is leaning against the doorframe. Her face and shoulders are broad, and strong muscles as well as full breasts can be glimpsed under her low-cut silk blouse: a country girl in town girl’s clothes. She holds out a hand: “I’m Julie.” She goes on talking, calm, self-possessed: “Each of us keeps half of what she earns and pays the other half to the household. And we don’t let in anyone who’s drunk or stinks or anyone we don’t trust.”

“Got a bouncer?” Vin asks.

“Hell no,” Julie fires back, then smirks half-apologetically. “We got a rifle. Me and Maddy can shoot, we take turns standing guard.”

“Magdalena,” the Mexican woman corrects, and from her resigned tone this is not the first time she has done so.

“And Hansen has been making things difficult for you ever since,” Chris sums up.

“Every way he could. _Maldito_.” Magdalena’s eyes flash. “Our horse had its tendons slashed, I had to shoot him. Shit in our letterbox. A couple dead rats down our chimney. We got to make sure that none of us ever walks out alone.” She sighs deeply. “And you saw that it’s not enough.”

Steps come quickly down the stairs, and Dr Gomez walks into the kitchen.

“Janet’s not too bad, just bruises,” he says straight away. “Eva got a kicking, she has two broken ribs, a sprained wrist, bruises all over. I gave her some laudanum, she’s fast asleep. I’ll come back tomorrow. She starts bleeding from her mouth or … anywhere else, come and get me at once.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Another woman has come down the stairs. She’s dark-haired and slim, in her late thirties; some marks of age are visible under her carefully-applied make-up and in the way her body sags a little when she forgets to stand up straight. “How much do we owe you?”

“Five dollars’ll do, Miss Emerson, thanks.”

“Dr Gomez. Please. Ten at least,” she counters, with a small smile to soften the firm tone, and hands him a small roll of dollar bills.

Chris takes a step forward. “While you’re at it, Doctor. Vin here,” a quick warning scowl at Vin’s headshake, “stopped a bullet with his thigh four days ago. You have a look at him, I’ll pay for your trouble.”

“We will pay for you too, Mr …?” Miss Emerson says. 

“My name’s Chris. No, you won’t pay for us if you want us to stick around.”

Gomez laughs and touches Vin’s shoulder. “Step into the parlour, friend.”

They re-enter the kitchen exchanging grins. “He’ll be good as gold in a couple of days,” the doctor reports. “Only slight damage, no need to fret.” He winks at Vin, puts his hat back on and sketches a collective salute. His eyes linger a little on Magdalena before he turns and heads for the door.

“What did you mean by _sticking around_?” Miss Emerson asks, polite and to the point.

Chris sees that Vin is chatting with Julie and decides to answer for both of them. If Vin doesn’t want to help out, he’s free to leave. “We’ll go see Hansen first thing in the morning, see if we can talk sense into him. Is it true what your friend said, that the sheriff is on Hansen’s payroll?”

“Yes. And Hansen’s got more than twenty hired guns of his own. By the way, I’m Ann. Have you both had supper?” She waits for Chris’s nod, and says, “Then maybe … we can offer you some company for the night. Free of charge, of course.” She pauses briefly. “Not as payment. As thanks.”

Chris and Vin glance at each other. Vin grins at Chris, then at Julie. Chris looks down and sticks both hands into his gunbelt. 

He isn’t highly sexed, and it suits him fine. Half a dozen times a year, when his need to be touched is stronger than his need for solitude, he buys a woman’s time, for a couple of hours or maybe a night. He’s been doing that since he was sixteen, when his elder brother took him to New Orleans and bought him his first woman in one of the elegant mansions along Basin Street. There have been a few women he didn’t pay for – mutual interest which never lasted more than a couple of weeks – and there have also been a few men, quick give-and-take encounters in alleys or jail cells or during cattle drives. Occasionally, he has accepted what was offered not because he wanted it, but because a refusal would have been worse.

This is one of those times. Ann is kind, and he and Vin have spent six weeks without touching anyone who wasn’t injured or dead. Without touching anyone with gentleness. Chris turns to Ann and looks towards the stairs. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to,” Ann whispers softly as they go up. 

He strokes her arm, looks into her eyes, clear and intelligent, surrounded by small soft wrinkles. “Let’s keep each other company. For a little while.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris and Vin meet a few more people in Las Cruces and spend some significant time in a rented room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to darcyone for her help with English and Sindarina for her help with Cajun French.
> 
>  _Hors de combat_ = standard French for "out of action".  
>  _Oui, nous-autres, on l'a fait, et alors?_ = Cajun French for "Yeah, we did that, so?"

  
  


In the morning they get up, politely refuse breakfast and walk back to the hotel. Las Cruces is awake: wagons bouncing up and down Main Street, women bustling with shopping baskets, American and Mexican kids racing to school, some in separate groups, some together.

“Good, civilised folks,” Vin says out of a corner of his mouth. “Wouldn’t lift a finger to help two women bein beaten black and blue.”

“Hansen needs to know a couple of facts of life,” Chris says, then gives Vin a quick sideways look. “You in?”

Vin turns and stares at him, genuine surprise mixed with impatience. “What’d you think?” Neither says anything else until they’re in the hotel lobby.

“Ah, Mister Adams,” the clerk says, holding the key to their room without handing it over. “Mr Hansen would like a word with you and your friend. In his office on the second floor. At nine o’clock sharp.”

“We’ll be there,” Chris says shortly, snapping his fingers for the key.

Vin closes the door behind them, takes his hat off, throws it on the bed and straddles a chair. Chris goes to the washstand, undoes a few buttons of his shirt, pours water on the bottom of the washbowl and reaches for the soap.

“Had a good time?” Vin’s voice behind him is light, a friendly request for information. Chris acts as if he hadn’t heard and washes his hands and face, slowly, enjoying the feel of the cold water trickling down his shirt. He’ll find out where he can have a bath tonight. But first they must start talking about Hansen.

Vin seems to have other ideas. “Julie was fine,” he says. “Good-lookin. Fun. Clean. Good at her job.” He frowns and stops, possibly realising that he’s sounding like a salesman listing the merits of his latest special offer. Chris dries his face and neck and turns around, studying his companion in silence: there’s no smile in Vin’s eyes, no satisfied relaxation in his slouch.

They need to change the subject. Chris opens his mouth to do so, but Vin forestalls him. “And what we did was fine too.” He scratches his nose and blows out a small breath. “Except for one thing. Right in the middle of it, it kind of came to me that if I had my druthers, I’d be doin somethin else altogether.”

Chris freezes. It’s as if he and Vin were standing on a swaying bridge, suspended over some deep chasm, and both of them could stumble and fall at any moment. He breathes slowly and evenly. He will stop Vin from going on, and they’ll work out what Hansen might say and do, and what they might say and do in response. 

He hears his own voice, cool, guarded. “Such as?”

Vin stands up and quickly says “Such as this” as he takes two steps towards Chris, takes his face into his hands and delivers a short, hard kiss full on his mouth. Then he steps back, breathing a little faster; his body is tensing, ready to dodge or block a punch, but there’s a hint of a smile in his eyes, a hint of boyish challenge in his tightly-pursed lips.

Chris stares at the air between them. The action was not entirely unexpected, but the desire leaping into his body and filling it, fast and almost desperate, is. Unlike last night, when pleasure came after long, respectful mutual exploration and careful words and touches.

Vin’s face lights up and his eyes crinkle. “Thought so,” he says. Chris had never noticed that there’s a dimple in his right cheek.

Chris looks him over, slowly. “Thought what?”

Vin is concentrating on buckling up his gunbelt, but his dimple is still quite visible. As is something else below the gunbelt. “Well. Guess this conversation’ll have to wait until after we’ve met Mr Hansen.” He looks up, suddenly serious. “I move we say no to whatever he suggests.”

Chris would like to light up a cigar, but doesn’t, because he wants to keep the new tastes on his lips and tongue for a little while longer. “Seconded.”

  
  


Karl Hansen is tall, hefty, clean-shaven, and is wearing a freshly-ironed cotton shirt, good black trousers and shiny boots. On his desk there are a pot of coffee and three cups. Chris and Vin sit and sip coffee, waiting for Hansen to open.

“You’re the men who put my employees _hors de combat_.”

Vin blinks at the foreign expression. Chris smiles, his Cajun French instantly resurfacing in his mind as if twenty-odd years hadn’t passed without him hearing or speaking it.

“ _Oui, nous-autres, on l’a fait. Et alors?_ ” Both Vin and Hansen gape, but not for long.

“Why?” Hansen asks, straight to the point after the failure of his little power play.

Vin answers, just as swiftly. “Can’t stand to see men beatin up on women. I’m funny that way.”

“We wanted to encourage your employees to pick fights with someone their size,” Chris adds.

“So. I may safely assume that neither of you’d be interested in working _for_ me.”

“Safely enough,” Vin smirks.

“In that case, we need to come to an agreement.”

“We do,” Chris says. “Your men leave the Garnet Street women alone, nothing happens to them. Your men bother them again, they get shot.”

“You mean that, until someone stops you, you’ll help these women to keep stealing my customers.”

“Wrong. Nobody made your customers follow these girls at gunpoint. You want more business, hire good girls and treat ‘em right,” Vin says, matter-of-fact.

“We’ll stick around a while,” Chris concludes, knowing that Vin won’t mind his speaking for them both. “Just to make sure.”

“All I can say is, you have been warned.” Hansen stands up. “And I need your room. I’ll ask you to vacate it at once.”

Vin waits until the door of Hansen’s office closes behind them before turning to Chris and drawling, “About that _conversation_ we were going to have.” There’s a little laughter in his voice as he stresses the central word.

“It’ll have to wait,” Chris says, going down the stairs. “Let’s pack our saddlebags and go see the sheriff.”

“I’ve been waitin for the best part of six weeks,” Vin says cheerfully. “What’s another couple of hours?”

  
  


The sheriff’s office is a little dusty, the Wanted posters are neatly tacked to the walls. The sheriff is the wrong side of fifty, his clothes are worn but clean, his face lined, weary. It sags a little when Chris and Vin step in, saddlebags over their shoulders.

“We heard you’re good friends with Mister Hansen,” Chris says.

“You’re the men who helped the Garnet Street women,” the sheriff replies. _Women_ rather than _whores_ ; maybe there’s a chance. They put their saddlebags down and watch him.

The sheriff doesn’t lower his eyes. “I don’t get any money from Hansen,” he says, and Chris’s instincts and experience tell him that this isn’t a lie. “And we’re not friends. He owns half the town and wants to own all of it.”

“But you ain’t goin to fight him,” Vin says.

“No, I’m not. I had a deputy, Fred Montoya. Last year he arrested Hansen for bullying the Chinese family who runs the laundry. The judge fined Hansen two hundred dollars and released him. Fred was found behind the laundry, with his throat slashed.”

“Anyone else go against him?”

“Yeah. There’s a woman, Mrs Flaherty. Widow with money. She’s dead set on building a meeting hall for women, so that they can fight to get the vote. Crazy, I know, but it’s her money. She’s tried twice. The first time the framework of the hall caught fire. The second time I was keeping an eye on it. My new deputy Jack Doyle and I shot at a couple of Hansen’s men as they were setting fire to the timber. They shot back. Doyle’s left arm had to be amputated. I caught a bullet in a shoulder. And nobody in town saw or heard anything.”

He pauses for a long moment, sighs. “That’s why I’m not going to go against Hansen any more. Can’t find anyone willing to be deputised. Can’t do anything by myself.”

Vin narrows his eyes a little, glances at Chris and waits for his nod. Then he says bluntly, “Would you be up to it, if you had a couple of new deputies for a while?”

The sheriff hesitates for just a moment. “You two are part of the bunch that went across the river and wiped out Calvera’s band, aren’t you.”

“We’re what’s left of it,” Vin says quietly. “So. Do we have a deal?”

“We do,” the sheriff says, a little paler, but now he’s standing up straighter. “As of now. And if you need a place to stay, Miss Nussbaum, in Spring Street, rents rooms. Not expensive, and not a dump either. She’s a little eccentric, but she’s honest.”

  
  


The room is clean, freshly-painted. All the furniture is a small wardrobe, a washstand, one chair, and a huge Mexican bed. Miss Nussbaum – shortish, squarish, friendly, a strange accent – kindly provided them with a bottle of water and an empty tomato can in case they smoked.

Vin goes to the door and bolts it. They stand and gaze at each other. 

Eventually Vin blows out a little air and goes to sit on the bed. “I ain’t got much more to say. Except, I’m glad we’re both alive, and I’m glad we’re both here. Also, it ain’t hard to guess that you …”

“Hold it,” Chris breaks in. “Don’t guess about what you don’t know.” If something really happened between them now, it wouldn’t be a man bringing another man off with hands or mouth in some dark spot, a quick act quickly forgotten. It would be a man doing it with a friend, it would mean more than a plank thrown across a space.

“Look,” he says. “There’s something you must know. I’ve never been all that interested in …” he jerks his head towards the bed. “I _can_ , I just don’t often _want_ to. With anybody.” He stops. Talking is effective if it’s short and to the point; he remembers _Say, what’s your name?_ and _Make it Vin_ , a lifetime ago, and _Thought so_ a short while ago. But sometimes talking is stepping out in the dark, every step a stumble and a potential fall.

The last words are the hardest. His mouth has gone dry.

“And yet,” he says. “When you kissed me earlier. It was different.”

“I noticed.” When Vin grins, it starts in his eyes, then his whole face creases up. “Especially when you didn’t reach for your gun.” He gives the bed one small pat. “Come on. Lots of _and yet_ before we start workin.” Now he’s laughing openly. “I’ll be gentle.”

“Oh, you will?” Chris sits down beside Vin, draws him close and kisses him hard. He’s never kissed a man before today, and it’s all so damn easy and natural, Vin turning his face into the kiss, the faint scratch of stubble against stubble, Vin’s mouth opening under his, Vin moving his lips and tongue over Chris’s mouth, over and over.

They break apart, and Vin makes a small sound of approval and kisses Chris again, and this time he splays a hand – square, warm, with large blunt-tipped fingers – over Chris’s crotch, palming Chris and moving over the stiff cloth of his trousers and the hardness underneath. 

He makes another small appreciative sound. “Come on,” he repeats. “Open up. Show me.”

It’s not all that easy to do as he’s told, but it’s not that hard either, and it’s good to see Vin’s eyes go wide as Chris deals with buttons and cloth and pulls himself out. Vin quickly moistens his palm and his breath catches a little as he caresses the warm, hard flesh and swipes his thumb over the leaking tip. When he wraps his hand around Chris it’s nothing like those clumsy moments in alleys or behind the remuda: both of them are looking down when Vin tightens his hold and starts stroking and squeezing, gently at first and then faster and harder, and the last thing Chris sees before he closes his eyes is a corner of Vin’s mouth lifting, just like when they looked at each other across the saloon table and Vin showed him two fingers, _I’m in too._

And then there’s just darkness and fast movement, rough and tender at the same time, and Chris shudders violently and spurts in Vin’s hand, and Vin’s sticky fingers caress him lightly as he finishes. He opens his eyes and smiles. Vin’s fingers brush lightly over him a few more times before he wipes them on the bedsheet.

“It’s even better with no clothes on,” Vin says mildly, casting a meaningful glance at the swelling in his own trousers.

Chris has recovered enough to respond with a firm nod. “Strip,” he says, and there’s laughter in his voice and in Vin’s eyes as they both remember yesterday morning.

Vin obeys, but does it leisurely, bandana first, then shirt, with just a faint tinge of pink on his neck. He wants Chris to look at him – he’s not flaunting himself, but he knows how broad his shoulders are, and how slim his waist is, and (Chris’s breath almost catches) how his small nipples practically ask to be licked. Boots and socks follow a little awkwardly, levis and drawers are pulled off with a small mischievous grin, and he faces Chris, naked, erect.

“Hey. This goes both ways,” he says, and stabs a finger towards Chris a couple of times, then goes to sit on the chair, fingers steepled, an expectant expression on his face.

Chris laughs briefly and complies, quickly and business-like, although he can’t help noticing how Vin’s eyes are opening wider, and how he’s breathing a little faster, and how one of his hands is straying to stroke his erection.

“Don’t.”

“Right.” Vin moves to the bed and sprawls across it, spread-eagled. Chris stares at him, motionless. He’ll have to play it by ear. He _wants_ to play it by ear. He _wants_. He _wants_.

He stretches out on top of Vin, slides an arm under Vin’s neck, and makes him feel his weight and his arousal. Vin smiles and helps, moving underneath him so that their cocks are aligned, and licks one of his shoulders, tongue raspy as a cat’s, and that nearly sends Chris over the edge again. 

“No,” he says. “This time we’re taking it easy.”

His nerves tighten up as he feels bare skin and chest hair and muscles shifting under him, and his body instinctively knows what to do, and wants to do it, unhurriedly, enjoying every second, every contact. He starts thrusting slowly and steadily, and Vin’s hips meet each of his thrusts and slam back hard against the mattress, and Vin stares up at him, unguarded, hungry.

“Go on. Don’t stop.”

“I don’t aim to,” Chris gasps out, and his body starts moving faster and harder, and Vin’s fingers clutch his shoulders in a bruising grip, and Chris’s control flies out of the window as he arches and spasms in a release unlike anything he’s ever experienced, and the body under his bucks and pulses and spills, head tipped back, eyes half-shut, teeth clamped against his lower lip.

Chris slides off Vin’s body and falls back on the bed, sweaty and sticky and dizzy. Beside him there’s no movement and no sound; amazing, no comments or questions, he can have some blissfully quiet contemplation of what has just taken place.

After a little while the silence becomes worrying. Chris rolls to one side, props himself up on an elbow and looks down at Vin. 

“You still alive?”

Vin pretends to think about it, shoulders and body shaking in silent laughter. “I’m all done talkin. Just enjoyin bein where I am.”

With a small amused snort, Chris brushes his forefinger along the creases on both sides of Vin’s mouth and dips it into the dimple. He will study Vin like a book. Like a language to be learned. For however long they’ll be riding together.

“Where’d you learn?” he asks, nodding towards the bed, immediately regretting his abruptness.

“ _This_? Oh, here and there.” Vin is easy, unembarrassed. “First time ever, at seventeen. Saloon girl. Like I died and went to heaven. And then, on the Chisholm Trail, I found that there’s other roads to heaven as well.” He waits a little while and pokes Chris in the ribs. “You?”

Chris shrugs. “Like you said, here and there.” All better left unspoken, for the time being at least.

Vin slowly strokes Chris’s side. “This was great. Infinitely better than my own right hand.” He lifts said right hand and regards it with interest. “Which for a while I thought was goin to be all I could get if I kept on ridin with you … Ow!” This as Chris delivers a sharp slap on his unprotected backside. “Right. I’m gettin up. We got to find this Mrs Flaherty. And go check on the girls in Garnet Street.”

Chris opens a side pocket of his saddlebags and pulls out his straight razor. “Better look respectable. We’re the two new deputies.”

  
  


Mrs Flaherty is in her late forties: green eyes, reddish-brown hair with streaks of grey, and a buxom figure modestly covered by a dark blue riding skirt and a buttoned-up blue blouse. She meets Chris and Vin outside what’s left of her hall: two walls, half the ceiling, some charred decking and a few blackened rafters.

She studies both of them for a long moment. “Jenny Nussbaum told me that you’re professional gunmen,” she says. “But for some reason you have decided to help us against Karl Hansen. We won’t ask why. We’re just grateful.”

“Miss Nussbaum, who runs our rooming house?”

“The very same.”

“If you give us the names of whoever built the hall that was destroyed, we’ll talk to them,” Chris says. “They’ll probably be glad that we’ll be around to help out, and to keep an eye on things.”

“And they’ll be glad that I’ll be paying them half as much again what I paid the first time,” Mrs Flaherty says.

“We’re goin to keep an eye on the women in Garnet Street too.” Vin slightly narrows his eyes as he waits for Mrs Flaherty’s response.

She is unperturbed. “Jenny Nussbaum and I have discussed this, Mr Staberg. Bed work is like mining work: hard, dirty and dangerous, and some of us wish there could be alternatives, but for the time being there aren’t any.” She stops, thinks, raises her eyes again. “Maybe the first step is workers thinking about what their rights are.”

Chris and Vin exchange a look as they set out towards Garnet Street.

“Hard, dirty and dangerous,” Chris says. “That’s our job description too.”

“We’re workers gettin together with other workers,” says Vin.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We must be ready for the moment Hansen makes a move."

  
  


Garnet Street is at the opposite end of town from the proposed site of the Women’s Hall. They get there by early evening; Julie and Magdalena come to the door and let them in before they knock.

“Doctor’s here,” Julie says. “Eva’s conscious, but she’s not out of danger yet.” Then she goes to put the _Sorry, we’re closed_ sign in the front window.

Both women look meaningfully at the stars pinned to the men’s shirts, and Julie whistles softly. “That’s good news.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Chris says to them, giving Vin a gentle push through the doorway to the kitchen. His hand rests between Vin’s shoulderblades for a moment longer than necessary; Julie taps Magdalena’s shoulder and holds her hand out. Magdalena, with a long-suffering sigh, slaps a two-dollar bill into it.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” says Magdalena, her accent suddenly stronger, and she rolls her eyes in a pretty good impression of a not-too-bright foreigner. “She took some money from me, is all.” Julie quickly whispers something to Vin, who tries unsuccessfully to hide a grin.

“Can you send someone to Mrs Flaherty’s house and ask her to come over?” Chris asks. “We don’t know where she lives.”

“Not far from here,” Ann replies. “I’ll ask Wei Chiang, from the laundry next door.”

After a few minutes, Mrs Flaherty comes in, and Miss Nussbaum is with her. They all squeeze around the large kitchen table, except Wei Chiang - maybe twenty years old, quiet, with intense eyes and a burn on his left forearm – who leans against the doorframe, half in and half out of the room.

Mrs Flaherty sees Dr Gomez and beams at him. “I don’t know how to thank you, Doctor. An hour or so ago I had a visit from a couple of your cousins. They said that they’ll come to the hall tomorrow to take measurements, and that they’ll start rebuilding next week.”

“They’re good builders and carpenters,” the doctor says. “Maybe if your hall is good and solid when it’s finished, people in town will start hiring them, even if they’re not _americanos_.”

“But we’re not here to talk about the Women’s Hall,” Mrs Flaherty says. “Let’s listen to the new deputies.”

“The sheriff has wired Judge MacGregor and asked him to come here for a couple of weeks,” Chris begins. “McGregor’s supposed to be a man with little time for bullies. He wired back that he’ll be here in eight or ten days; he needs to finish a trial and pass a sentence in Albuquerque.”

“Meanwhile, we and the sheriff’re goin to work on a set of bylaws,” Vin continues. “Penalties for disturbin the peace. Penalties for threatenin businesses. Penalties for demandin payments from businesses. Penalties for settin fire to buildings. We’ll post them all over town. So Hansen’s men can’t say they ain’t been warned.”

Everyone nods assent. Chris glances around the room. “But we got to know who Hansen’s men are. We need your help. A list of names, with the places where they work or where they hang around.”

“Easy for us to do,” curly-haired Janet laughs. “Whores … beg your pardon, ladies … working girls hear lots of secrets, if they know how to ask and when to ask.”

“I can give you some names,” Wei Chiang says. 

“So can I,” Miss Nussbaum says. “I have met several of Hansen’s complices … sorry, accomplices.” Her cheeks go pink for a second.

“ _Compadres_ ,” Vin says, grinning. “Where’re you from, ma’am?”

She shrugs. “Germany. France. England. Now, New Mexico.” A little smile hovers over her last words.

Chris gives her a searching look. “By choice?”

She returns his gaze levelly. “Socialists …” she notices her companions’ blank expressions, “people who got together to change economic relations … were undesired.” She corrects herself. “Unwelcome. In Germany and France. In London, it took about ten years before things became difficult.”

“And here?”

Another little smile, which this time does not reach her eyes. “Here, it may take a few more years before it happens.”

Chris glances around the room again. Mexicans, Americans, a Chinaman, a woman who has been run out of three countries in Europe, gunfighters, prostitutes, a respectable widow. All willing to take risks together. Like the first weeks in the Mexican village, when everyone was working together, digging the ditch, pulling up the net, practising with rifles and handguns. 

He mentally shakes his head at himself. No, he’s wrong there. In the village there had been a tightly-knit community plus seven strangers, who had more in common with Calvera’s band than with the farmers and their families. Here they’re all more equal, all of them struggling to settle down in a growing town. A corner of his mouth twitches as he imagines invisible planks, rope bridges and arches stretching between all them, connecting them to one another. What did Vin say on their first night here, something about feelings worth living for?

With an imperceptible sigh he gets back to business. “Hansen may try to show us who’s boss around here, sooner rather than later,” he says calmly. “We must be ready for the moment he makes a move. Someone must keep watch day and night. Have you only got one rifle?” A couple of the women nod. “We’ll get you another. Who else can shoot?”

“I have a handgun,” Ann says. “No guarantee that I could hit the side of a barn with it.”

“Can the two of you,” Chris looks at Julie and Magdalena, “give her a few tips? Show her how to aim for the centre of a man’s body, much better than the head or the chest.” He turns towards Vin, sees assent and trust on his face. “They’ll try to hit this house, the Women’s Hall and maybe Miss Nussbaum’s place. There’s over half a mile between this house and the Women’s Hall, and the rooming house is sort of in-between. Vin and I can’t be everywhere at the same time.” He addresses Mrs Flaherty, who is sitting calm and composed, her back straight. “Ma’am, can you defend yourself?”

“Please call me Rosie. I’m not bad with a rifle. My husband had a dozen horses. We had to fight off wolves, bears, and thieves.” She nods towards Miss Nussbaum. “Jenny can stay close to me. But …” she stops, frowning. “It won’t be enough. After what happened to the sheriff and his deputy, I’m afraid we may need some stronger … deterrent than a couple of rifles.”

“We could repay Hansen with his same coin,” Chris says. “By setting fire to his storerooms.”

“Or blowing them up,” Jenny Nussbaum says softly. They all turn towards her. She lowers her eyes.

“Jenny? You can handle dynamite?” Mrs Flaherty is the first to voice the question everyone wants to ask.

“If I need to,” is the quiet reply. “I learned in Paris, in 1870.” She leaves it at that, without any further explanation.

Dr Gomez hesitates, then speaks up. “One of my brothers-in-law is a mining engineer. He works in a small copper mine about fifteen miles southwest of here. I may be able to borrow a little dynamite.”

“I’ll go with you,” Vin says. “Leave tomorrow at dawn?”

Wei Chiang detaches himself from the door frame. “You can borrow my parents’ buckboard,” he says, his young voice deep and sure. “The horse is plenty strong.”

“You got a lot of useful relatives,” Chris says to Gomez, his lips quirking a little.

Gomez is sitting very close to Magdalena, and sketches a tentative caress on her hair. “And I hope that some day this lady will become a part of them.”

  
  


It’s dark, the streets are quiet, the stores are closed. The windows are still lit in Esperanza’s Café; Chris and Vin walk side by side towards it. After a couple of minutes’ silence, Chris turns towards Vin: “What was the girls’ bet?”

Vin takes a step sideways before he says, straight-faced, “That it’d take me less than twenty-four hours to … shall we say open your eyes?” He takes another quick step away from possible retribution. “Smart girls.” 

They look at each other, half-smiling. “Come on,” Vin says. “I’m starvin. With the advance the sheriff gave us, I can buy you dinner. And pay you back for half the cost of the room.”

They have almost finished their chicken dinners when the sheriff walks in and makes a beeline for them. “I need you,” he says shortly. “Five of Hansen’s men are in the saloon. Armed and drunk.”

They’re on their feet before the sheriff stops speaking. “Let’s go lower the odds,” Vin says to Chris as they run down Main Street. 

“Right,” says Chris. “I’ll go in from the back door.” As the sheriff and Vin go through the swing doors at the front, he turns the corner of the building into the back alley. He gets to the back door of the saloon and noiselessly opens it.

The five men are standing by the bar, two unsteadily leaning against it, three nursing their drinks and surveying the room. They smirk at the sheriff and Vin.

“We’re fixin on endin the night in Garnet Street,” one says, with an unmistakable Texas drawl. “If the whores point their little pop-guns at us, we’ll grab the guns, slap the whores, and show ‘em who wears the pants around here.” 

“That we can do here and now too,” says another one, unbuttoning his pants and taking two steps towards the sheriff.

“Put _that_ away at once,” the sheriff snaps. “You’re all under arrest. Drunk and disorderly. My deputy and I will take you to the jail. Unbuckle your gunbelts and put them on this table.”

“Your new deputy,” sneers a red-haired young man, one of the two supporting themselves against the bar. “Didn’t you have a different deputy last month, Sheriff? And another one last year?”

“Las Cruces ain’t such a healthy town for deputies,” the man beside him cackles. He’s older, with a couple of teeth missing, but has a well-used handgun in a holster tied to his thigh. He pushes himself away from the bar, facing the sheriff and Vin. “Let’s see how long this new one lasts.”

“I’d say quite a while,” Chris says softly behind him, and as the man turns he slams the barrel of his pistol hard against his temple. The man drops like a poleaxed steer. Out of the corner of his eye, Chris sees the Texan trying for a fast draw; he whirls around, fires, and shatters his forearm. The saloon fills with the echoes of the shots and the smell of cordite mixed with blood.

“Hey,” the red-headed man shouts,” that ain’t nice,” and attempts to draw his gun, but Vin forestalls him by breaking a bottle over his head, and plucks the gun from his hand as he folds and falls. 

The two uninjured men decide to follow the sheriff’s instructions: they relinquish their gunbelts, help their wounded companions and start moving towards the sheriff’s office. 

“There’ll be consequences,” the man with the unbuttoned pants shouts as he goes through the door.

“Not if you keep it where it belongs,” Vin says cheerfully as he herds him and his friends along the street.

  
  


“They ain’t all that fearsome. So far,” Vin summarises, back in Miss Nussbaum’s rooming house. 

“The ones we met tonight are only going to spend one night in jail. And Hansen has at least another dozen.” Chris draws deeply on his cigar and changes the subject. “You enjoying being a lawman?”

Vin shrugs. “Ain’t the first time. I was a deputy in Bisbee, Arizona, for nearly a year. Then I got into an argument with the sheriff.” He holds Chris’s interrogative gaze for a moment before giving in. “Sheriff was takin bribes from some cattlemen. I said I was goin to report him. So he made up some story about me bein drunk on duty all the time.”

“Were you?”

“No. I used to drink, but not all the time, and was never drunk on any job. He’d stacked the deck against me, so I just split, from one day to the next.” Vin takes off his shirt, goes to the washstand and runs a wet bandana over his face and neck, then turns his back to Chris, opens his trousers and washes his groin. “When this is over, I’m goin to rent a tub of hot water for a whole day. And I’m goin to spend it just soakin.”

Chris doesn’t reply. When this is over, there may be enough time for Vin to tell the rest of that story. And for himself to … No. Dodge is a closed chapter. So is Louisiana. And all the other places and failures and time wasted. No point in rehashing any of it, even if Vin asks. Which he probably will.

He puts out his cigar in the tomato can. “Shift,” he says mildly. “My turn.”

Vin has taken everything off but his drawers. He considers briefly, peels them off and throws them on the pile of his other clothes.

“I’m meetin Gomez at dawn,” he says, sliding between the sheets. “It’s a forty-mile round trip, we’ll be away two full days. So you and I’d better make hay while the sun shines.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Chris says shortly, taking off his shirt and trousers. “It’s been a long day, I’ve had it.” He doesn’t know to what extent he means this. Some more physical closeness, however welcome, would definitely be dangerous. As the saying goes – once, it’s an accident; twice, it’s a coincidence; three times, it’s a habit.

And yet.

“I like a challenge,” Vin laughs, turning towards him and lifting bedsheet and blanket to welcome him. And Chris laughs too and gets in beside Vin’s warm body; hell, some habits are good habits.

  
  


Their bodies are used to waking up before dawn. Vin takes a moment longer to leisurely stretch in the warm sheets, like a large cat. He pads to stand behind Chris, who is about to start shaving, surveys him in the mirror and runs a gentle finger over the bags under Chris’s eyes and the now softer lines between his eyebrows: “You don’t look safe to go out. Too comfortable. Too mellow,” he quips, face creasing mischievously.

Chris just gets on with shaving. When Vin is dressed, he walks up to him and, slowly and deliberately, unties his bandana and carefully ties the knot again, so as to cover a telltale bruise on the side of Vin’s neck. “Just like a new bride,” he assesses coolly, stepping out of Vin’s reach.

Vin shakes his head and opens the door. “Take care,” he says, and now he isn’t smiling. “Don’t jump into any new trouble until I get back.”

“ _If_ you and Gomez manage to get back without blowing yourselves up,” Chris replies as Vin strides off.

  
  


Two days later, Chris is spending the evening alone in the sheriff’s office. Their prisoners, patched up by Dr Gomez before he left, have been released; at least two of them will have problems shooting any kind of firearms in the foreseeable future. The sheriff, after he and Chris have posted the new bylaws near the doors of every single public building, has gone to spend a little time with his family; he’ll become a grandfather in a couple of months. There have been no further encounters with Hansen or his men – so far. 

Chris lights a cigar, and thinks of Vin getting to the copper mine and coming back with a load of dynamite. It’ll be good to hear about the miners, and to discuss where and how Hansen is planning to strike, and how the explosives could be used in a confrontation.

Does this mean he’s missing Vin? 

He has no time to find an answer. The front door bursts open and Janet from Garnet Street rushes in, dishevelled and white-faced. “Chris,” she calls out, panting.

Ten minutes later, he’s riding out of town, as fast as he can while leading another saddled horse. After a couple of miles, on top of a rise, he spots a buckboard in the distance, moving slowly and carefully, avoiding all bumps and holes in the road.

He gallops towards the wagon; he’s relieved that Vin, rather than the doctor, is driving, and doesn’t waste any time in greetings. “Vin, see you in Garnet Street. Doctor, you come with me. Eva’s taken a turn for the worse. She’s dying.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making plans. All together.

  
  


The freshly-dug grave is in a remote corner of the cemetery. No cross, no headstone, just a wooden board with two carved lines, _Eva Hoffmann, 1849-1884_. No priest or minister either – this had been Eva’s wish, whispered to Ann and the doctor with her last breaths.

“Her people have a prayer,” Ann says tentatively, her voice catching.

“Words,” Jenny Nussbaum says, and sighs. “Just words. But I can say the first ones.” For a few moments, looking down at the grave, she speaks softly in a language nobody else understands. Chris looks at the faces of the four Garnet Street women, bare of makeup and streaked by tears, bent in prayer or memory or both. Dr Gomez is there, and Rosie Flaherty, and the Chiang family, Wei and his young sister and their middle-aged parents. Chris looks at the mountains, thinking of the four mounds of earth that lie beyond them, in the Mexican village, apart from the other graves, with rough-hewn wooden crosses bearing just names and surnames. 

Vin steps a little closer to Chris. Their shoulders brush, Chris is glad of the contact. 

“A good girl,” Mr Chiang says in the silence. “She teach us English words.”

“She bring soup when Mr Hansen smash up our shop and hurt our son,” Mrs Chiang continues, her voice a mournful singsong.

“She never spoke of where she came from. But once she told me that she left a baby girl behind,” Ann says, almost a whisper. “All she had here was us.”

“ _Us_ is a lot of people,” Rosie Flaherty says firmly. “You who worked with her and loved her. Jenny who could say the words for her. All of us who will mourn her. And these two men, who will help to get justice for her.”

They stop talking and walk out of the cemetery, in twos and threes. When they’re out of the little wooden gate, Janet speaks up: “The men who beat us up,” she says. “Hansen’s men. Charlie Allen and Pat Nolan. They’re the bouncers in the brothel.”

  
  


The brothel is a large house, an untidy front yard, a small red lantern over the front door, dark-red drapery inside. The madam – middle-aged, thin, dressed in black – is behind the bar and greets the sheriff and Chris with a curt nod. Two men are standing at the bar, drinking, and half a dozen women in low-cut dresses are clustered nearby, throwing hesitant glances at the two law officers.

“We’re looking for Charlie Allen and Pat Nolan,” the sheriff says. The madam does not answer or move, and just glares at her girls. All look down, frozen, except a blonde in her forties, who quickly jerks her chin towards one of the men at the bar, then glances upstairs. The sheriff runs up the stairs, fast and nimble for his age; the man pointed out by the blonde whirls towards her and finds himself face to face with Chris and his drawn gun.

“Move, and you’re dead.” Chris keeps his gun trained on him and his companion, and nods briefly towards the madam, who has started to reach for something in a drawer. “That goes for you too.”

Upstairs a door bursts open, then another, and there’s some shouting, a body falling, a window thrown open, a heavy thump on the boardwalk, and bare feet beginning to run. Chris remains where he is, cursing inwardly, but shifting neither eyes nor gun from the people he’s watching.

Somewhere down the street there’s more noise, then Chris hears Vin’s voice, raised, dangerous. “Stop. Now.” A long moment, then a single gunshot, followed by a howl of pain some distance away.

The sheriff reappears at the top of the stairs and comes down slowly, blood flowing from his nose and mouth. Vin rushes in, gun drawn, eyes sweeping the room: “Stopped one,” he says shortly. “Nolan, the one who kicked Eva. They’ve taken him to our office.”

“Good,” the sheriff mumbles. “Let’s take Allen too.”

Chris turns to Allen’s companion: “You. Drop your gunbelt and get out.”

“This doesn’t end here,” the man mutters on his way out.

“No. It doesn’t,” the sheriff says, trying to smile thanks to the blonde, who is handing him a wet cloth. “Now the charge is murder.”

  
  


Allen and Nolan are sharing one of the two cells, where they will stay until Judge McGregor arrives. Dr Gomez, after patching up the sheriff’s nose and extracting Vin’s bullet from Nolan’s leg, has gone off to help a woman in labour. Chris, Vin and the sheriff are sipping whisky and assessing the situation.

“Two out of action,” Vin says. “Hansen and twenty-odd to go.”

“Twenty-four altogether,” Chris says, drawing on his cigar. “Three of us.”

“Come on,” Vin protests, voice soft, eyes level. “Julie. Magdalena. Rosie Flaherty. Maybe Wei Chiang. Not to mention our landlady.”

“Three of us,” Chris repeats. “With some help.” They exchange a long look, both thinking of the Mexican village: a few professionals and many men with firearms they could barely use, but who didn’t hesitate to grab whatever they could find, machetes, axes, shovels. Vin shakes his head at Chris, but doesn’t push his point.

“I could wire …” the sheriff begins, but stops abruptly: there are noises at the back, in the alley on the other side of the cells.

“I’ll go,” Vin says, and disappears, swift and silent as a cat. Chris and the sheriff rush to the cells, and see ropes being tied around the bars of the windows, by the prisoners and someone on the outside. A horse neighs, a man swears, two guns fire from opposite sides, and then a loud grunt of pain, horses galloping off, one more shot, noises in the distance, and Vin’s voice, close, reassuring.

“Twenty-two now. A wounded man here, and a dead man at the end of the street.”

They join him at the back. A townsman is approaching, leading a horse with a lifeless body thrown across the saddle. Vin is tying his bandana around the forearm of a man cursing in English and Spanish.

“I’ll get Gomez,” Chris says, re-holstering his gun. “We lock this one up, then we get together. All of us.”

  
  


The Chiang laundry is a long, low wooden building. All the windows are open, but the room is still clammy from the steam rising from the two huge cauldrons where shirts and bedsheets are swirling in boiling water. At one end, broken tubs and the remains of two tables are eloquent reminders of the last visit from Hansen’s men.

“A couple of years ago the government made a law. Chinese Exclusion Act.” Wei Chiang is leaning against floor-to-ceiling shelving where neat brown-paper parcels await collection. His English is perfect, accentless. And his voice is shaking with rage. “We can’t become citizens. And we can’t complain when the white men ask for protection money and beat us up.”

“You’re all under threat,” the sheriff states, wiping his forehead. 

“Yeah.” Chris pulls a cigar out and lights it. “But,” he takes a long draw and looks around, at the sombre-faced women from Garnet Street, at Rosie Flaherty, at Jenny Nussbaum, and at the doctor and Vin standing by the windows and looking out, “you don’t live close together, which makes it easier for Hansen’s men to attack you. We need to choose no more than two places, make them as secure as we can, and make a stand there.” He pauses. “After we hit Hansen’s warehouse.”

“Wait.” Rosie Flaherty says sharply. “You and Vin and Sheriff Dobbs have the experience. But we all need to have a say in what we do and when we do it.”

The sheriff nods agreement. “Someone has to be in charge,” he says, and nods again, to Chris and Vin. “I’ll be glad if either of you men is. But first we must discuss things. Together.”

“Our place is our home and our business,” Ann says. “We saved for it. Eva died for it. I want to defend it.”

“So do I,” says Magdalena. Julie and Janet nod firmly.

“Our place.” Mr Chiang is not tall, but he is standing straight and speaking with authority. “The work, hard and dirty. But work and family, all we have. The _lo fan_ break our things, hurt our son. But we not get out. We fight with you.”

“The Women’s Hall.” Rosie Flaherty again, her shoulders squared. “For years I have longed for a safe place where women could meet and plan how to get their rights. I dreamed of it every time I was told I needed my husband’s permission to do anything. Every time my husband hit me. Every time I saw a wife with a bruised face.’ She sighs. “I tried twice, and saw it go up in flames twice. I’ll kill and die before it happens again.” She turns towards her friend. “Jenny?”

Jenny Nussbaum waits a while before answering, eyes down, fingers knitted together. “If we attack Hansen first, and hit him hard enough,” she lifts her eyes, and the resolve in them is total, “we shouldn’t have too much trouble defending ourselves.” She pauses briefly. “Hansen’s house is at the edge of town, and his warehouse is not far from my boarding house. We can blow both up, house and warehouse. At the same time.” She ignores the assorted gasps around her. “And then wait for their men to come to us, in Garnet Street and at the laundry. If …” she takes a deep breath. “If the professionals agree.”

Vin considers for one moment, and in the look he gives Chris there is a mixture of warmth, hope, and challenge. Then he turns to Jenny and lifts his index finger. “This one does.”

Chris takes another long pull on his cigar. In the Mexican village, he had been the uncontested leader – and his misguided plan of stealing Calvera’s horses left the village undefended, facilitated Sotero’s betrayal and ultimately led to the death of four of the men he had recruited. And those deaths will haunt him to his own last moment. 

He meets Vin’s eyes with just the hint of a smile, then looks at Jenny Nussbaum and silently shows her two fingers of his right hand.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks+++ to darcyone, without whom I would live in constant linguistic uncertainty.
> 
>  _Lo fan_ : a Cantonese disparaging term for _non-Chinese_ in general, or _white people_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some endings are permanent, some are temporary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to long-suffering darcyone for advice with language, and to all implied readers for being patient while this chapter was being sweated over. Hope you enjoy it.
> 
> A "tumbleweed wagon" was a wagon that transported prisoners to jail. Like the weed, it tumbled across several areas of the Wild West.

  
  


“One last chance, one last attempt to do things by the book. I’m the one who’ll have to report to Judge McGregor,” the sheriff says. He looks more worn and weary than usual. “I’m going to arrest Hansen for ordering the attack on Miss Hoffmann and for organising the attempted escape of her murderers.”

“The three of us will have to shoot it out against twenty or so men, on their home ground,” Chris objects. “High odds.”

“Only one way to find out,” the sheriff replies shortly.

Vin grabs his rifle and pushes his hat down on his head. “Reminds me of a fella I knew in Tombstone,” he says, straight-faced.

“What happened to him?” 

“He wanted to check if there was any coal oil left in a barrel. So he lit a match.”

  
  


Hansen is not at his home, an imposing two-storey building at the opposite end of town to Garnet Street, not far from the sheriff’s office and the Women’s Hall. He is not at the hotel or at his brothel. All three buildings are quiet, two or three men keeping watch on each. In the street, the sheriff, Chris and Vin look at one another, puzzled. Then they notice a young woman who is sidling on the opposite side of the street, trying to catch their attention as unobtrusively as possible.

“She works in Hansen’s brothel,” the sheriff whispers, and jerks his head towards the general store. She nods and goes in. The sheriff and Chris follow a couple of minutes later, leaving Vin to keep watch.

They move towards an unattended counter where there’s a pile of work shirts. The woman approaches the counter, picks up a denim shirt and feels its texture. “He’s gone to get more men,” she murmurs, barely moving her lips. “Tomorrow they’ll attack the jail. And then they’ll get even with Mrs Flaherty and the women at Garnet Street.” She starts moving away, then picks up a bonnet from another counter, strokes it, and adds very softly, “I used to be friends with Eva. And Ann. And the others.” 

Chris and the sheriff step into the street. Each knows that the other is thinking the same thing. Chris puts it into words: “We go ahead with the dynamite. Tonight.”

  
  


Hansen’s warehouse is outside town, a short walk from the Nussbaum rooming house. It’s a long wooden building, with a low roof, no windows and two doors, at the front and at the back. Usually there are four guards, one on the roof, two outside the main door, and one at the back.

“We’ll have to take out the one on the roof first,” whispers Vin. He and Chris are standing outside the rooming house, protected by the moonless night. It’s nearly one o’clock, they’ve got an hour or so before things start.

“Yeah,” Chris says. He looks at Vin. “I’ll take care of him.” 

“Thanks,” Vin says; they don’t need to spell it out, the guard on the roof will have to be killed swiftly and silently, and that means a knife across the throat. “Wei and I’ll deal with the others.”

“Wei’s young.”

“We need him. I can’t manage three guards on my own.”

“All right. But watch yourselves.” Chris lays a hand on Vin’s shoulder and leaves it there for a moment. “The sheriff ‘s in his office. Are the women where they said they would be?”

Vin nods. “Rosie Flaherty and Julie are in the Women’s Hall. The other women will try to defend their place and the laundry.” He flashes Chris a grin. “Old man Chiang has somethin that could be a shotgun, probably as old as he is.”

Chris half-smiles. “Better than a shovel or a pitchfork. We’ll have Hansen’s men between us.” They exchange a look. “Let’s go inside.”

The curtains are drawn and the lamp is turned down, but the two people in the parlour can see well enough to work. Wei Chiang is, slowly and carefully, tying sticks of dynamite into small bundles and passing them to Jenny. Silent and totally focused, she uses a thin knife to make a deep hole into a stick in each bundle; she then threads a longish, thin fuse into the hole and connects the end to a bigger coiled fuse on the table.

“There will be eight bundles,” she says. “Four for Hansen’s house, with one main fuse,” she points to a large wicker shopping basket on the chair beside hers, where four bundles are lying, wrapped in a shawl to prevent the sticks from sweating, “and four for the warehouse, with another main fuse.”

“Warehouse first,” says Chris. “Vin, Wei and I’ll get rid of the guards and put down the first four bundles. Then I’ll come back for Jenny, and we’ll run to Hansen’s house with the rest.” He looks down at the basket and at the woman, still bent on her work. “How fast can you run?”

“Pretty fast. If you carry the basket.” 

“Wei and I’ll wait a couple of minutes and light the fuse,” Vin concludes.

Jenny gives him a serious look. “Remember, they’re long fuses, but they burn forty yards a second. So … light the end, and run as fast as you can."

“Will do, ma’am,” Vin says reassuringly. Then he turns to Wei. “You know what you got to do.”

“Yes,” Wei answers, his voice shaking just a little. “I wait for your signal, then make noises and shout in Cantonese like there’s three or four of us. You kill the guards. I cover you as you light the fuse. Then we run like hell.”

“Good,” says Chris. “Especially the _run like hell_ part.” He pats the young man on the shoulder. “Good luck, everybody.”

Chris gets almost to the top of the warehouse wall with minimal noise, peeks over the edge of the roof, waits until the guard has his back to him, climbs up and takes his knife from its sheath inside his right boot. He refuses to use Britt’s knife for this – he hates using knives, but sometimes there’s no alternative, he learned that in the war. He steps quickly and silently towards the guard; one slash and he’s dead before he even knows it. Chris takes his rifle and his place, waves down to Vin, gets a little wave back, and waits. The moment he hears an assortment of bangs, thumps and shouts in Wei’s language, he slides down, grabs the basket, and he and Jenny are off towards Hansen’s house. There are shots and cries of pain behind them, and Chris’s guts twist at the thought of Vin and Wei, but he can’t afford to look back.

Close to Hansen’s house, Chris glances into an alley near the back door: by the door there’s a guard. Chris just waits: after a few moments a deafening blast, like a thousand dogs barking at the same time, comes from the direction of the warehouse. The shock of it makes the ground vibrate beneath people's feet. The guard runs into Hansen’s house, as strands of thick acrid smoke drift towards Chris and Jenny and make them choke and cough. Men are running out into the street, unsure of where, and from whom, they can defend themselves. 

“Now,” says Jenny, and runs down the alley with her basket. She’s back in a couple of minutes, without the basket, and only Chris spots the fuse trailing beneath her skirt. The end’s firmly in her hand: Chris shields her as she lays it down and lights it.

The flame runs up the fuse for about five yards, and Chris and Jenny are about to run for cover, when Chris turns and sees it fizzle and go out. He curses and takes half a step, and Jenny seizes his arm, with considerable strength. “No time to argue,” she whispers fiercely. “I’m sixty and have no one. Give me a match.” She grabs a handful of matches and their eyes meet. “It will be …” she searches for a word, finds it, and says quickly, “worthwhile.”

For a fraction of a moment everything else ceases to exist, and he and this woman almost old enough to be his mother are connected with all their hearts and minds. Then she runs, bent double, toward the end of the fuse. Chris glimpses a movement behind a window and fires towards it, but at the same time a rifle barks, Jenny’s body jerks and shudders, and she falls face down, a small square shape with a trail of blood behind her. Chris starts running towards her, but with a grunt of pain she turns towards him, shouts “No,” crawls the couple of yards between her and the end of the fuse, grabs it and strikes a match.

Chris runs for cover, and behind him there’s a big flash, like lightning, and a moment later everything goes blinding red, and he’s lifted off his feet and thrown sideways, and there’s just blackness.

He opens his eyes. Thick black smoke, in his mouth, his eyes, his throat; burning sparks in the air. There’s ringing in his ears, which gradually takes shape and becomes words, shouted words.

“Chris. Chris, talk to me, damn you.”

He’s lying on his back, surrounded by burning wood and glass shards. Vin is squatting beside him, eyes wild, face smoke-smeared and pale under his tan. 

“You all right? Chris. Talk to me.”

Chris tries to turn towards him, and all his muscles scream against it. “Yeah, I’m all right.” He coughs as he inhales more smoke. “Help me up.”

Vin puts an arm around him and pulls him up, slowly and gently, and his arm stays around Chris. Hansen’s house is gutted, boards and beams are still falling, pieces of cloth – curtains, rugs, who knows what else – are floating in the air. In front of what was the main door there is a large hole, burning rubble around it, smoke and flames rising out of its mouth.

“Wei?” Chris asks, the word echoing in his ears.

“Back at the laundry.” Vin scans the area, frowns. “Where’s Jenny?”

Chris shakes his head, wincing, and stares at the hole, the last place where he saw her. Vin swallows hard in silence. 

Among much shouting and screaming, half a dozen armed men are rushing towards the jail; the sheriff is firing at them from the roof of his office, and gunfire is coming from one of his windows as well.

“Go lend a hand in Garnet Street,” Chris says to Vin. “I’ll go help the sheriff.”

Vin stands still for a moment, studying him. “Will you …?”

“Yeah,” Chris says firmly, hoping that Vin won’t see how his legs are shaking, and gives him a light shove. “Move.”

Vin does, sprinting easily towards the end of town. Chris stumbles back the way he and Jenny had come a short time ago. His chest is on fire, his legs are heavy, he’s coughing and wheezing, but he pushes himself through the chaos and makes it to the alley behind the jail. Two men are there, trying to pass firearms to Hansen’s men through the bars of their cells. Chris fires twice, they drop. He wonders if he’ll manage to kick the back door in, but the door starts opening from the inside. He levels his gun towards it, but it’s Julie, moving easily in boots and trousers.

“We joined forces,” she says shortly. “Sheriff’s keepin an eye on the Women’s Hall from the roof.” 

Rosie Flaherty is behind a window with a Winchester, exchanging shots with a man who has two Colts. She steps back to reload, and Chris shoots the man, who drops his guns and keels over.

“Where’s Jenny?” Rosie asks, and she looks at Chris’s face and buries her face in her hands, sobbing.

Julie lays a light hand on her shoulder. “We’ll mourn her later,” she says gently.

Rosie nods, wipes her eyes, takes up her rifle and goes back to her station. “Hansen’s still around,” she says. “Regrouping, with the men he hired yesterday. Hope they hit us instead of Garnet Street.”

“Vin and Wei are there now,” Chris reassures her, shoving anything he may be feeling out of the way: in his line of work, the here and now’s the only thing that matters. “I’ll go up to keep the sheriff company.”

  
  


The sky is turning from black to dark grey. Smoke still fills the air. Every now and then the sheriff nods off, to shake himself awake immediately afterwards.

And in the first dim light of morning armed men come out of what’s left of Hansen’s warehouse, Hansen in the middle of them. Fifteen, Chris counts quickly: Hansen has had some luck, but not as much as he hoped.

“Let’s go,” Hansen’s voice booms, and he draws his gun, and Chris shoots him where he stands, and then shoots the men on both sides of him. The sheriff’s Winchester joins its voice to that of Chris’s Colt, and another man falls. From inside the office, a rifle blasts from the window on the left, a second one from the window on the right, and a third from the door.

 _Three_ rifles …?

No time to wonder. Trying to suppress another coughing fit, Chris covers the sheriff as he is reloading, and then both shoot down into Hansen’s men as they attempt to storm the office. The three rifles inside are doing a good job, more men are falling. One of them screams, and he’s echoed by a woman’s scream. A few moments later, Rosie’s voice says something calm and soothing, and then Vin’s voice shouts up towards the roof: “Julie’s hit, ain’t a bad wound, she’ll live.”

It’s daylight, it’s possible to see clearly. The street is empty except for a dozen of Hansen’s men, dead or wounded, and several horses. Gunfire gradually comes to a stop. A couple of Hansen’s men grab horses and ride hell for leather out of town; another three follow them, and Chris and the sheriff let them go. 

“Plenty of work for Dr Gomez,” Vin says, and finds two more horses, leaps on one, seizes the reins of the other, and gallops down Main Street towards the other end of town.

In the office, Rosie has found the bottle in the sheriff’s bottom drawer and is pouring a little onto Julie’s left shoulder and a little more into a glass. Soon two horses come to a stop at the door and Dr Gomez runs in, followed by Vin. Chris lets out a breath, which turns into a fit of coughing.

“Don’t like that cough,” Dr Gomez mutters, giving Julie some laudanum before stitching her up.

“Me neither,” says Vin.

Chris looks him up and down. “And you came back here because …?”

“Was needed more here,” Vin says, glancing at Chris, then quickly away. “Magdalena’s a good shot. Ann managed to hit a man who was about to grab Janet. Old man Chiang got one man with his blunderbuss, and his wife and daughter poured buckets of boilin water from a window on anyone tryin to break in.”

“Wei?” Rosie asks.

“Bullet in his back,” Dr Gomez says, stitching away while Julie, half dazed by laudanum, bites her bottom lip and moans a little. “No damage to the lungs, some to the muscles. The girls said they’ll help out at the laundry when all this is over.”

“Lots of new girls.” Vin’s grin is small and tired, but still lights up his face. “Most of the ones who worked at Hansen’s brothel are goin to move to Garnet Street.” 

“Right.” Dr Gomez washes his hands and turns to the sheriff. “I’ll tend to the wounded out there, and then you can lock them up.”

“Be a mite crowded,” Julie quips drowsily. She kind of sounds like Vin, and Chris smiles at her.

  
  


Chris and Vin have guarded the sheriff’s office and the prisoners for a few hours, and they’ve just been relieved by the sheriff and Rosie. They’re walking back to the rooming house, past the saloon, past Esperanza’s Café, still open in spite of some broken windows. They exchanged only a minimum of words while they were cleaning up around the office, and now they’re walking in silence, each deep in his thoughts.

Chris puts one foot in front of the other mechanically. He’s drained. Yet another enemy fought and defeated, the next one’s around the corner. Walking beside him there are the ghosts that have kept him company since the war, men he killed, men who died fighting alongside him. Now there’s a woman too; her last word was _worthwhile_ , and Chris is no longer sure that anything much is.

The rooming house is in reasonable condition. There’s a dead body on the roof, the main door is half off its hinges, a thread of smoke is coming from the privy. Chris and Vin lay the body down in the back yard, pour water over the smoking privy wall and close the door as best they can. Then they go to their room, barely exchange a glance and start tearing the clothes off each other, desire flaring up between them like a burning fuse. They take their pleasure wordlessly, roughly, almost brutally, as if shouting _we’re still alive, with another load of bad memories, but what the hell, we’re here and we’re together._ Later, when they’re lying side by side on the bed, panting and sweaty and sticky, Vin quietly runs the back of a finger along Chris’s cheek, and Chris kisses him for a long time, with small sounds of satisfaction when Vin starts rubbing himself against him. They’re together. For now. It’s enough; in their line of work it’s unwise to look far ahead.

  
  


The cemetery is almost overflowing. In the remote corner there are now two graves side by side, Eva’s and the new one, a small mound with a wooden board and an even shorter inscription, _Jenny Nussbaum, 182? – 1884_.

There’s no attempt at a prayer, which they all know Jenny wouldn’t have wanted. “She left me her books,” Ann says, her voice breaking. “We’ll all read them.”

“I didn’t know much about her life, but she was the best friend I ever had.” Rosie Flaherty wipes her eyes and looks in the direction of the yet-to-be-rebuilt women’s hall. “Once she told me that we need the memories of the past to build a better future. The Jenny Nussbaum Hall will be her legacy.” Something worth dying for, maybe, Chris thinks, and then looks at the people standing around the grave, the sheriff, the doctor, the women from Garnet Street, and the Chiang family, with Wei leaning heavily on a cane. People who made choices, and who now have something to live for. 

Rosie Flaherty looks at the sheriff, who clears his throat. He has aged five years in a few days, he moves slowly, heavily. He nods to Rosie and takes a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Miss Nussbaum left this with me last week. It was witnessed by Mrs Flaherty and Dr Gomez”. He clears his throat again and starts reading: “ _Sheriff Dobbs. You are a decent man, and I never believed the rumours that you took money from Hansen_." The women from Garnet Street lower their heads; they all believed these rumours for a while. " _It seems likely that I will die in the next few days,_ " the sheriff reads on, and it's as if the words were being spoken by Miss Nussbaum's voice, brisk and to the point. " _Therefore I inform you that I would like to leave, the correct word is probably 'bequeath', my rooming house to Miss Magdalena Ramirez of Garnet Street._ " Gasps of surprise, and a loud " _Madre de Dios_ " from Magdalena. " _She is a sensible woman who will take good care of the guests. Furthermore, since there are widespread prejudices against her present profession, if a man wanted to propose to her, it might be easier if she worked in a different, although unavoidably capitalist, business_." At these last words they all look at one another in puzzlement, but the general idea is clear and welcome. Dr Gomez goes a little pink and smiles at Magdalena. She smiles back. The sheriff gets to the end: " _I trust that you will make sure that these instructions are carried out according to the laws. In solidarity_." 

____

____

____

____

__Solidarity. Chris looks around again and feels it there between them, tangible, as strong as the main pillar of a bridge. Ann, Janet and Julie embrace Magdalena, Julie awkwardly because her arm is in a sling. The new women are part of it too; before the funeral, Ann told Chris that they have accepted the idea of working collectively, no bosses and no employees. The sheriff is discussing things with the Chiangs and Rosie is fussing over Wei. And Vin is at Chris’s side, where he’s been all along._ _

__“Workers gettin together,” Vin whispers. “Yeah, Jenny’d have liked her funeral.”_ _

__Mr Chiang grimaces and mutters something in his language. “Women wanting to vote and to run businesses,” Wei translates. “They’ll want to run _us_ as well.” _ _

__

__

__Mrs Chiang beams at her husband and whispers something to her son. Wei grins and translates. “Women have been running men since the world began.”_ _

__

____

  
  


The trial is over. Judge McGregor, arrived from Albuquerque on the early morning stage, has passed sentences on the dozen men packed into the two jail cells. There was no prosecutor and there was just one, not very enthusiastic, defence lawyer, scared up by the sheriff. A string of witnesses – Ann, Janet, Dr Gomez, customers of the laundry and of both brothels – testified against Hansen and his men. The jury – twelve men from town and near-by ranches – found Charlie Allen and Pat Nolan guilty of murdering Eva Hoffmann, and the other men guilty of threats, blackmail and assorted attempted murders. Tomorrow at dawn Allen and Nolan will hang, and in the afternoon a tumbleweed wagon will come to take the other prisoners to the newly-opened New Mexico Penitentiary in Santa Fe.

No charges were laid against anyone else. When passing sentence, Judge McGregor pointed out that Hansen had been known to be a permanent threat to the citizens of Las Cruces, had disregarded the byelaws made by the sheriff and the deputies and had recruited a number of hired guns, some of whom had rewards on their heads. With regard to the two dynamite explosions, the judge found that they could be considered anticipatory self-defence, especially since the person who planned and carried out the dynamite attacks had given her life to help her friends.

Tonight the judge, the sheriff and the two deputies are having supper in Esperanza’s Café.

“So you’re really dead set on retiring,” the judge says to the sheriff before putting the last piece of pie into his mouth.

“I am.” The sheriff’s face is still worn, but there is a quiet, happy light in his eyes. “Haven’t got all that many years left. I want to spend them as a husband, father and grandfather.”

McGregor sighs. “Replacing you is going to be a problem.” He turns to Chris and Vin, eyes moving back and forth between them. “And neither of you two has given me an answer yet.”

“Tomorrow, before you leave,” Vin promises.

  
  


They have opened the window. The night air is cool and restful. After the events of the previous days, they are the only guests of the rooming house; Magdalena has said they can stay there until Judgement Day if they want to, free of charge.

Chris leans outside and lights the last cigar of the day, grateful for Vin’s silence on the wisdom of adding tobacco smoke to the assorted damages caused by dynamite explosions. Time to start the conversation. “We could stick around until they find someone permanent,” he says, and wonders what his friend will think about the first word.

“We,” Vin says, as if it was a word in a foreign language. And then he seems to get sidetracked. “You know, that first night in Camarga, in the saloon. Your job offer. Craziest notion I ever heard.”

Chris turns around. “And yet.”

“Yeah, and yet. I was driftin. So were you. And then, the seven of us, helpin out in a village where we stuck out like sore thumbs. Of course you and I rode out at the end.” He looks up and addresses a cobweb in a corner of the ceiling. “Here, it’s somethin else. You and I are just two of a lot of diff’rent people comin together.” He rubs a small burn mark on the side of his neck. “We may have a chance.” He stops and considers. “Would be a shame to let all of those new bylaws go to waste.”

“We may decide we’re not really suited to being lawmen,” Chris says. _We_. Hell, Vin said it too.

“When I was in Bisbee,” Vin looks up to the ceiling again, trying to find the words there. “I didn’t really mind bein a deputy until the trouble started. Here, I wouldn’t mind that much either, if the sheriff was a man I knew. And respected. And trusted. And was kinda fond of.”

“Enough,” Chris laughs. “What if it was the other way around? If the sheriff was a younger man. Not bad with a gun. Young enough to have a few illusions left, but with a head on his shoulders most of the time.” 

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Vin crosses the small space between them and starts unbuttoning Chris’s shirt. “I like arguin with you, but there’s a few things I like better.” 

Chris steps back, eyes narrowed. “No.”

Vin blinks a couple of times. “No?”

“No.” Chris reaches out, palms the bulge in Vin’s pants and starts stroking it lightly, teasingly. Then, with deliberate slowness, he undoes the buttons, takes him out, looks at him and kneels.

  
  


Vin is stretching on the bed, eyes closed, muscles tight, a beatific smile on his face. Chris nudges him aside and lies down beside him, smiling faintly to himself as a childhood memory flashes through his mind.

When he was seven or eight years old, a stray tawny cat used to wander around the stables of the plantation, occasionally sneaking into the kitchens. He wasn’t wild, but wouldn’t purr for anyone except Chris; he would stride towards him and throw his head back, demanding to be picked up and stroked, and then purr deeply, almost a growl. Vin purrs too, sometimes, a soft throaty noise when his body makes small movements to accommodate itself to Chris’s, neck lifting to allow Chris’s arm to slide under and round, hips shifting under Chris’s hands. Chris aims to discover more ways to get him to make that noise. They have time. How much, it doesn’t matter.

Chris closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep. His last semi-coherent thoughts are of unfamiliar ground under his feet and of wide roads ahead, now that he has stepped off a long, unsteady bridge.


End file.
